


Pyrite

by The_Gray_Ghost



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, I promise I will keep tw updated, M/M, My work - Freeform, No violence though, TW for kidnapping, Teen for potential spiciness in the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27438259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Gray_Ghost/pseuds/The_Gray_Ghost
Summary: When Edith is kidnapped by pirates from her father's coastal house in Italy, she finds herself far more welcome with the crew than she has ever felt with the snobbish upper-class Italian society.Mystery, intrigue, sweet sweet lovin', and sword fights. What more could you want?





	1. Chapter 1

She watched the leader step off the dingy and onto the ship. He strode across the deck with an undeniable air of confidence. As she glared at him, she felt large hands grabbing her arms, trying to hoist her onto the ship. She wrenched her arms out of their grasp, and delicately stepped off the shaky wooden transport herself. Once on board, she stood uncertainly among the chaos that surrounded her. Enormous, sun-browned men swept past her on all sides, shouting in foreign languages and hauling large barrels and heavy wooden boxes. She looked up, into the whirling mass of sails and ropes, transfixed by the wildly intertwined webs of mooring that criss-crossed far above her head. Her eyes were drawn to one in particular, a loop hanging at the same level as the ship’s deck. She watched a thin, bald man put one boot into the loop, wrapping his arm into the rope, and then shout something in another language. Before she could blink, he shot up, pulled upwards by the loop his foot rested in. The makeshift pulley stopped at another deck far above her head, and she shaded her eyes against the sun to see were the man had gone. She squinted and stared, but it seemed he had disappeared.  
As another burly sailor knocked into her shoulder, the box in his arms spilled out onto the deck. She saw that what he carried were the spoils from her own home. Sitting innocuously on the deck, surrounded by gold and jars of spices, sat one of her sister’s dolls, and a fur pelt of her father's. She stooped and quickly snatched them from the sailor, tucking them into her tightly folded arms and glaring at him. He leered down at her, and crooned in a language she did not understand. She spit at him, her saliva landing squarely on his chest. He reared back furiously as another sailor stepped in between them. She looked up into the dark eyes of the sailor who blocked the angry man, and saw it was the leader of the thieves He had long, dark hair with braids tucked between the heavy strands, and beads woven in and out of the tight plaits.  
He rested a hand on the sailor's arm, and spoke to him in a low, soothing voice in the same language the sailor had shouted at her with. The sailor scoffed, and yanked his arm away, gathering the spilled contents of the box and storming off. The leader turned to her, eyeing the goods she had gathered in her arms. He laughed, a surprisingly soft laugh, low and gentle. He gestured towards a cabin, and said in a thickly accented voice, “This way, please”. She glared at him, and stalked towards the cabin, her treasures clutched tightly in her arms.


	2. Come With Us

In the cabin, the leader, offered her an envelope. He spoke again in his quiet voice, gesturing to the small band of men who stood scattered around the cabin.

“You can take this, and come with us, or stay here and keep your... goods. The choice is yours.”

She glanced out onto the deck, at the bustling sailors that occasionally stopped to leer into the cabin. She turned and looked out through the porthole, at the port that stood firmly on land in the distance. She looked at the band of mercenaries that the leader had gestured to as his own. There were decidedly fewer people in his little crew than on the ship. And, she thought, it would be much easier to escape on land than on a boat that rarely makes port. She stroked the fur in her arms, gnawing the inside of her cheek. She knew what she had to do, but the though of leaving behind everything she had ever known, with nothing at all to remind her of home, was terrifying. She held the pelt up to her face, took a deep breath, smelling her home for the last time. Sighing, she let the treasures of her home fall from her arms. She snatched the envelope from the man. The leader grinned. One of his cronies collected the goods she had dropped, and stepped out of the cabin, the last of her home in his arms.

The leader, the man the pirates called 'Guiar' sat back on his throne-like seat, his loose shirt billowing around his hips. He waved at the men in the cabin, dismissing them with a few words. Once the cabin was empty, Guiar pushed a platter across the table between them.

"We will depart soon, the men must sort the... findings. Then, I get my money, we travel to Spain. We have a job there."

A thick, scarred man slammed the door open. Guiar stands, and the men begin to speak rapidly, firing words back and forth. Edith catches a few words, but the general attitude in the room was tense enough for her to understand they were arguing. Suddenly, they both go quiet, and Guiar breaks into a beatific smile. In a few long strides, he crosses the cabin and claps the other man on the arm. They exchange a few more words, seemingly just pleasantries, before the large man goes to the table Guiar had been sitting at and pulls out a bag the size of a large cat. He heaves it onto the table, grinning crookedly as Guiar nods in approval. One of Guiar's men steps into the cabin, and grabs the large bag at Guiar's behest. Swinging it over his shoulder, he leaves the cabin and enters the mass of sweaty, busy pirates. Guiar stepped up behind Edith and held an arm towards the door. "M'lady." He said, grinning mischievously. She took a deep breath before stepping out into the fray. 


	3. The Ship

Guiar and his men settled in on the dingy that was meant to take them back to land. Edith shifted uncomfortably as sharp boxes poked her in the side. She watched the men grab the oars and begin to row, then turned and watched the port grow closer and closer as she felt her heart sink and settle in the bottom of her chest. Her brilliant escape plan is seeming less and less bright as it's enactment looms closer.

On the dock, they took brief stop on the dock to trade their little dingy in and board the ship. Guiar introduced Edith to as if it was a person, and patted the hull affectionately as he stepped aboard. He took Edith below the deck and showed her a small cabin, containing only a bunk and a chest, yet still feeling remarkably overcrowded. Edith held her breath the entire time, fighting the urge to vomit at the stench. Guiar seemed entirely unbothered, and told her to meet him in the captain's cabin for dinner once they had set sail.

At dinner, Edith was surprised to see the entire crew all squeeze into the captain's cabin for the meal. It seemed that the crew was actually small enough to all fit at the long dining table in the cabin. They all moved so quickly when loading and preparing the ship, it had felt like a much larger group of people. She was also surprised to realize that the entire crew ate together. On her father's trade ships, the crew was expected to eat in the kitchen, and the only people allowed in the captain's cabin had been the captain and the noble family. Her eyes skinned across the plates on the table and she realized almost half of them had no meat on them. She stared curiously at a crew mate with a shaved head and a few missing fingers as they ate, and noticed that their plate had no beef on it. Several people sat with their heads together, and she realized they were all praying. She tried to listen across the roar of the buff man across from her, but realized it was futile.

Instead, she turned to the very loud pirate that was ranting in front of her, and quickly discovered what he was talking about was the way a band of "rapscallions" were mistreating a poor young man on the docks, and how he had to "make an example". As he said it, he turned to his left and leaned back, revealing a haggard looking man with long, greasy hair, grinning ear to ear. The big man patted his arm affectionately, and the young man stared up at him adoringly. Edith suddenly felt like she was intruding on a very personal moment and turned away, her eyes falling on Guiar. His dark hair was still tied back, but had come loose during the day, and Edith felt an irritating stir in her chest as she watched the slender man brush a strand of hair from his face. She hadn't predicted how intimate the crew would be, nor the closeness she had witnessed throughout the evening. Supportive claps to shoulders, half-stifled laughter between mates. It seemed to her that the crew was a large family, despite the fact that they all looked different. Most of them spoke English or Portuguese to some extent, but at least two of the mates spoke neither, and they were still included. They sat snug between the other crew members, who offered them food and gestured to communicate. Apparently, language wasn't much of a barrier to these people. Edith spent the rest of the dinner quietly watching the intimate moments the crew shared, loud jokes breaking into explosive laughter and shared stories across the table as the meal continued.


	4. Revealing

After dinner, the crew collected the dirty dishes and descended below deck as one laughing, joking mass, leaving Edith alone with Guiar in the cabin. Guiar sat at a desk, bent over books, writing furiously. Edith stood in front of him uncomfortably. "Nearly done," Guiar said, finishing a word with a flourish and dropping his quill. He stood and walked around the desk, leaning on it with his hip, standing between Edith and the table. Edith noted with interest that she wasn't put off by his proximity, but felt herself flush at the thought. She looked down, breaking eye contact, staring instead at his shirt. She saw a little embroidered leaf curling across the chest from under his arm, curling in at the base of his collarbone. She watched as he reached up and took his dark hair down, letting it hang loosely around his shoulders. She was startled by how feminine he looked with his hair down, and wondered if he every had trouble dealing with other people's reactions because of it.

"Guiar, do people not take you seriously because of how feminine you look?" The words tumbled out of her mouth before she had a second to think about how they could be misinterpreted. However, instead of an angry retort, Edith was startled to hear him giggle. She looked up and met his eyes, glittering in the candle light.

"So. you've discovered my secret, little fox!" Guiar laughed. He shook his head, amused. "That was the quickest anyone has noticed! Well, I may as well tell you the whole truth," he sighed. "You may want to sit down."

Edith plopped into a patched armchair beside the desk, confused and tired.

"Firstly, you can stop calling me 'Guiar', even the crew only calls me that on trade runs. My name is Ines, and I am the captain of this fine ship."

Edith shook her head. "I'm sorry, isn't Ines a woman's name?"

The captain grinned. "Indeed, it is." Ines reached down and smoothed his blouse to lay flat against his chest. Edith gasped as she saw the way the fabric flattened over Ines's chest, revealing that the captain had breasts.

"But women can't be captains!" she exclaimed.

"Pirates can."

"So you're... you're a woman?"

"Indeed, my little fox. Flesh and blood."

Edith felt a shiver run down her back at the way Ines said it. Her voice was smoother than it had sounded earlier in the day. Edith supposed that when pretending to be a man, Ines had to make her voice sound lower and more masculine. Still, Ines's true voice was shocking, almost more so than the realization that Guiar was a woman. Edith pressed her lips together, looking away from Ines's burning eyes.


End file.
